Painted Yupo background

This is what happened to the Yupo background I made earlier. The colors were so hot that it begged for something cold, so I added a steely eyed geisha, who, looking at her now, has Stephen Fry's chin. Not that this bothers me, because SF is one of my favorite people. I also used a stamp that I made sometime ago out of Mastercarve.

Yupo Experiment 1

For some time I have been trying to tame the beast called Yupo, a synthetic water resistant paper; an alternative for traditional art papers. With only whip and chair to protect me, Yupo still keeps snarling and will not do what I want. 

This weekend I started on a series of experiments to enable me to understand this 100% polypropylene paper, with which some people make such beautiful work. 
You either love Yupo, or hate it, and I think that this depends on how you have worked in the past. Watercolor paper absorbs water, Yupo resists it, and the pigment lies on top of the Yupo after the water has evaporated. This to most, is a new way of working.


All I did with Yupo this weekend, was experiment with backgrounds and different textures.

* I used regular table salt, and I haven't brushed it off yet.
* This is Winsor & Newton Designer's Goache in yellow and pink.
* I added a couple of drops of rubbing alcohol on the paper before letting it dry.
* Somehow I am reminded of my Sunday breakfast.
* Overall: the colors remained vibrant. I think that once I remove the salt, it may affect the colors, dulling them somewhat.

I wet the Yupo before applying any pigments, then used Dr Martin, and let them run. I might have used too much ink, and in this case I moved the paper about until I got a pleasing mix and applied plastic wrap. It took a long time to dry, and even though I had 'molded' interesting lines in the plastic wrap, I still find this a little flat.
* The most interesting part in this, is the line from top to bottom because I couldn't curb my impatience and took a peek.
* All in all, a little too dark for my taste and a bit muddy due to the inks mixing a lot or too much even.
* I see an 'eye looking back at me.

Back to the gouache. Lighter on the touch. Water first on the Yupo; mixed paint to a liquid creamy consistency, and a drop or two of rubbing alcohol.
* Some areas still too dark, to my liking, with nothing very interesting going on. Used some brown ink in this, which in some areas had a nice effect.

Monochrome, on wet Yupo using the tipping and dripping technique with gouache. This 'complex' technique brings out your inner child. I used two pieces of plastic wrap, just because I fumbled with the tearing of it, and ended up with 2 small pieces. One on the top and one on the bottom, leaving a strip uncovered, where I added a few small drops of rubbing alcohol which created a little stream of planets.

One last experiment, which I think worked well. This is a messy little painting, that I used to try out several things, but the one that worked well was using wax crayons to outline your drawing, instead of pencil. All the white on the cups was done with a white wax crayon. I liked the effect. Yevgenia Watts mentions this in her Youtube tutorial.


I looked at the work of several artists who use Yupo very successfully and produce wonderful paintings on it.

Here is a short list of some names:

Ursula Rodrigues - shown on ArtCafe.net (sorry, didn't copy the links. Too busy Yupo-ing) ursularodrigues.com.
D.D. Gadjanski at ddgadjanski.ca
Yevgenia Watts at watercoloredhands.wordpress.com
Judy (can't find a last name) at dedraad.blogspot.com
and others.


I am by no means finished with Yupo, in spite of the snarls.

My photo came in first.

My picture of Athena came in first in Yevgenia Watts' "Blirthday Contest". 

How cool is that?

 

......and the cactus flowers came in third. 

I will be receiving the originals of the paintings. 

Have a look at the artist's blog to see her work.  

http://watercoloredhands.wordpress.com/
 

 

Paper Cut Collage. Moon in Pond.

So why make things easy when you can make them hard? This project started off quite innocently. Someone had given me Mexican chocolate and I saved the wrappers. Then one evening last week I make a fish. 

I quickly draw a fish on cardstock and painstakingly stick little pieces of wrapper paper on it.
Then I decide to make a pond. Of course, I first cut the waterlily pads because that's fun to do with some cardstock I had in my stack.
As I go along I make a rippled moon and decide to make my own background. 

I realize that for the lay-out I want, I need a background sheet of 30x35 cm, so I texturize 2 Yupo pages with ink and watercolors. I have little experience with Yupo and the experience I do have does not make me grab it often (I am not a watercolorist). However, this works really well and I use a sponge brush, a sponge roller and a little natural sponge (very spongy all this) to make something that looks like water.

In order to make it look like one sheet, I cut (I use an exacto) one side of one sheet in a wave pattern; paste my Yupo sheets to a cracker box for support, and paste down the various elements.

I also paste some of the snippets that I cut out to blend the two pages in the collage adding a little more dimension. Then I discover that I cannot seem to shoot a good picture of the finished project without trying out six different ways and still not succeeding.


What did I learn?
Do not use candy wrappers in a project that will take many hours to make. 
Candy wrapper paper does not look great on a photo.
Cracker boxes give excellent support in a pinch.
Yupo is nice after all. Here is my first attempt. It makes good backgrounds and offers me new possibilities now.
I really like paper cutting. Yupo cutting might be even better because you glide right through.


I listened to "A Murderous Procession" by Ariana Franklin, downloaded at Audible.com while working on this project.

National best-selling author Ariana Franklin resumes her Mistress of the Art of Death series with A Murderous Procession. In 1176, King Henry II's daughter is set to marry the king of Sicily. But when several wedding guests are murdered during the procession, Adelia must uncover who is behind the killings and who is the killer's real target. 

Yupo.

Yupo is a synthetic watercolor paper. In fact, it's not paper. It's 100% polypropylene. I haven't done much watercolor painting ever but when I did do it, the wetting and stretching of the paper seemed a lot of work and even then my paintings bubbled. Yupo did what it promised and it was easy to work with and on. Worth a try if you are into watercolors.